Witching There's Another Way: A Cozy Mystery (The Witchy Women of Coven Grove Book 4) Read Online Free Page A

He’s more than just a friend. He’s family. I don’t know that he can be in a town like this. But as long as he’s here… well, all he knows is that it doesn’t work in Coven Grove. Finding out it doesn’t work out there?” She shrugged. “That’s what he’s afraid of.”
    “It’s a shame,” Aiden said. “He’s a brilliant young man. I know several similar minded—”
    Bailey’s phone rang at the same time the office phone did. She and Aiden answered their respective phones, but it was, effectively, the same call. For Bailey, it was Ryan.
    “Where are you?” he asked. He sounded grim.
    “I’m at the tour office, we’re just about to close up, I think. Why? What’s up?”
    “Dala Kendleston just reported her daughter missing,” Ryan said. “I interviewed her for the paper, got a picture. You haven’t heard?”
    Aiden was muttering some question about what a child looked like. When Bailey glanced at him, Aiden mouthed ‘Seamus’—one of the local Sheriff’s deputies; the one who had helped them  catch Gloria and get Ryan’s name cleared.
    “Uh, no,” Bailey said, turning her attention back to the phone. “We’ll keep an eye out—”
    “No,” Ryan said, “there’s details. Um… your kind of details.”
    Bailey’s heart sank, and her stomach tightened as she straightened her back and caught Aiden’s eye again. He looked just as crestfallen as she felt. Seamus must have said something to tip him off.
    “Okay,” Bailey said. “I’m with Aiden. Where are you?”
    “Headed to the library to write this article, but you two meet me there,” Ryan said. There was a beat. “Makes me think about… well, I love you. That’s all. Come soon.”
    Bailey hung up, and Aiden did as well a moment later. He sighed.
    “It was a quiet three months,” Bailey said.
    Aiden snorted as he stood. “Yes,” he said. “I’m sad to see it come to an end.”
     

 
     
    Chapter 3
    Avery’s phone chimed, and in response he reached into his pocket and flicked the ringer off. “Sorry,” he said to the man sitting across from him, looking dressed for an occasion. “I should have switched it off before. Forgot.”
    Thomas Hope smiled the sort of smile that melted everyone in a ten yard radius, and shook his head, his hands resting on a menu as the deep, amber-brown pools of his eyes surveyed Avery’s embarrassed expression. “Don’t worry about it, Ave,” he said, his voice the perfect shade of baritone. “You can check it, if you want.”
    “Whatever it is,” Avery assured his date, “it can wait. Um… so do you… know what you want?”
    Thomas smiled again, this time with a hint of mischief. “I do.”
    “From the menu, I mean,” Avery managed to say.
    It was like this every time. Thomas dropped in from Portland to visit for a couple of weeks, and the two of them spent the first several days dancing around the subject, pretending they’d just met for the first time—again—and catching up. When they ran out of things to catch up on and couldn’t keep themselves apart any longer…
    “Pretty sure I order the same thing every time,” Thomas said, tapping the Sandbar menu. “Nobody out east makes chowder or crab cakes like this place.”
    “It’s a coastal thing.” Avery’s phone buzzed in his pocket again.
    Thomas followed his glance. “Really, it’s okay,” he said. “If it’s an emergency—”
    “I have no doubt I’ll hear about it later.” Avery took a deep breath, and released the growing tension in his stomach. This was his time. His and Thomas’.
    Except…
    The last time Thomas had come to town, he’d just started on his master’s degree, and Avery had done nothing more exciting than re-organize the nonfiction section in the Coven Grove library, as well as become the unofficial head librarian.
    This time, things were different. Avery was learning magic. The real stuff—arcane formulae, words of power, the angles of higher dimensions, areas of math that